Single celled organisms swimming around in the primordial ooze met up with each other for dates, eventually forming multicellular organisms that then evolved the ability to move around and meet up with other like minded organisms to be fruitful and multiply into early fishes that, several million years ago, walked on to dry land on clumsy fins that served as the first legs, only to evolve into reptiles and eventually mammals. One branch, of a particularly resourceful ape-kind, eventually colonized the planet, achieved the pinnacle of nature and then, for some inexplicable reason, invented air travel and started eating that unnatural abomination known as airline food.
If those early bacteria knew that the crowning achievement of Life on Earth was going to eat dubious organic matter microwaved to oblivion and served in aluminum foil, they’d have stopped going out on dates and stayed at home posting updates to Twitter and Facebook.
Airline food is the sort of nightmare mommy stomach cells warn their kids about. If kitchens were reactors, airline food would be nuclear waste and as a frequent flier, I experience Chernobyl every time I fly. And for this reason, I decided to stick to the “Asian Vegetarian Meal”, which, in the manner that tear gas is better than Agent Orange, is slightly safer to consume than fauna based offerings. But as you will soon find out, airlines manage to serve the sort of Asian vegetarian meal that would have justified George Bush’ claim that Iraq had biological weapons.
For starters, I cannot imagine that kitchens populated by regular Homo Sapiens can produce this sort of food (and I use the term “food” rather loosely here). In fact, I strongly believe Flight kitchens are located here:
And look somewhat like this:
Here is the anatomy of an airline meal. It is a plastic tray adorned by several accouterments such as a tea cup, a small paper bag of cutlery, a cup of something indescribably seedy looking which the flight attendant will claim is a salad, a small dessert that will usually be dry enough to deserve the loss the extra “s” and finally, the 2in x 4in aluminum foil box that holds what can only be charitably described as “food” and only hypothetically described as “edible”.
In the middle of this box, is something that resembles rice, rice that was apparently banished from the wet fertile fields of the tropics to the Gobi desert in summer. It is also heated to near plasma temperatures in a blast furnace. Then it is stored for several years along with large amounts of Silica Gel. Any renegade, insurgent water molecules are dealt with the swift brutality of Moammar Qaddafi. Then the flight attendant blowdries it using a hair dryer on “High” setting before serving it to you. Just in case.
To its left is a yellowish ooze. If any pasty looking off-whitish cubes are visible, it’s probably paneer. Paneer after a stint at Abu Ghraib. If it isn’t, it’s likely Dal. Dal tends to vary between #5c2700 and #d5ad42 in colour and can occasionally contain a few green lumps that Popeye would have consumed (and thrown up). The amount of Dal is also adjusted to ensure that it either outlasts the amount of rice OR leaves behind several spoonfuls of dry rice that is waiting to poke holes in your oesophagus.
To the right of the rice is an amorphous dark complexioned mass of coagulated vegetables fried till kingdom come. Occasionally, it promises to be Potato, a vegetable that is remarkably hard to make a bad tasting dish out of, but the airline kitchen staff at Isengard have mastered this. The combination of terminally ill potatoes, age-old spices of the kind found in Indian grocery stores in the US and the extreme microwaving make any potato dish taste metallic, somewhat like the oven itself. It’s as if the dish gave up any semblance of individuality and freedom under the harsh supervision of Isengard and let itself be subsumed by the Ferrous elements involved in the entire cooking process.
But no meal is complete without some form of bread, and the standard “Asian Vegetarian Meal” comes with a bun that is a choking hazard even for one of the Transformers. If one does not have dental insurance, it is best left alone. And the demoniacal chefs at Isengard also seem to like irony. They also give you a small slab of butter, as if to say that you can “try” softening the bread with it. But one does not entertain Genghis Khan with a Karan Johar movie, kill Bill with a Deepavali cape gun or try to soften the “Bun” with butter. The “Bun” scores higher on the Mohs scale than Diamond. The “Bun” was likely baked in the depths of the Earth’s core. In fact:
India is a nation that personifies unity in diversity. The diversity comes from the million different ways in which we get outraged. The unity comes from the fact that every “Asian Vegetarian meal” served on every airline is homogeneously alike.
But as always, I am not one to simply crib and leave the scene without offering a solution. I believe airlines can learn from trains.
ps 1: This post is an extended version of a short column I originally wrote for DNA (warning: pdf)
ps 2: I’ve been told that it’s been ages since I blogged. If you are referring to the act of pressing several keys on a keyboard to generate some form of digital output that finds it way to the interwebz, then I’ve been doing a fair bit on
It is rather uncommon of me to spend more than a couple of days in any city I visit on work. There’s usually only enough time to grab a Baja Chalupa (beans instead of beef) at a Taco Bell for nostalgia purposes in between the time spent commuting to the Chennai airport, standing at the checkin counter and sweet talking the counter person into giving me a free upgrade, encountering annoyed Govt of India employees at Immigration, wading through a crowd of old Indian people who do not understand that their seat numbers are not between “30 and 45” which are boarding right now, spending 20 hours in seats designed for mid-sized rabbits, eating food that’s been microwaved to oblivion, dreaming of using silencing anti-vocal-cord rays on annoying Indian babies, opening the overhead luggage compartments and doing a Ranganathan St with fellow passengers in the aisles well before the pilot even shifts to landing gear, running ahead of everyone to get to the front of the Immigration line at JFK, switching on my American accent (which turns on like a tube light usually) and explaining that I’m here for “business discussions”, searching for my luggage, telling customs that I really do not have any cigarettes, “curry” or “pickles”, dropping my bags off at the Delta counter which is manned entirely by kiosks and uncommunicative bots, taking the JFK Airtrain to Terminal 3 to find 1 Delta employee and 400 kiosks attempting to deal with 800 passengers all of whom have a flight to catch in the next 10 minutes, stripping down bare for the TSA security guys (and also peeling off my epidermis just to be on the safe side) and finally reaching Cincinnati, a place I seem to travel to more often than Sholinganallur or Siruseri.
Cincinnati is a large city with levels of urban excitement that slightly exceed that of a doped bear in hibernation. So when I found myself staring at a 2 week long stay, I was worried about what I would do in my leisure time. That was when my colleague Harish, who, by the way, coined the term amit_123, pointed out that the Creation Museum was just a few miles from downtown Cincinnati, my religious (and blogging) instincts fired up and we found ourselves at 2800, Bullitsburg Church road, Petersburg, Kentucky on a Sunday afternoon. Kentucky is filled with places that end in “burg” and for some reason it reminded me of whiskey and hooded white men wielding torches that burned crosses, so we decided to play it safe. I became Christopher (“Chris”) Asher and my friend, Harish Ravindran became (as a result of his undying fanboyism) Harris Jeyaraj. I even told him that he could explain his last name to evangelical Christians as “Victory of the Kingdom of God” or something to that effect.
For the uninitiated, the Creation Museum is a 21 million USD attempt to prove Darwin, Science and General Common Sense wrong. It is a museum dedicated to proving that the Bible was literally right and that the universe was created in 4004 BC. Nice vanity year no? Palindromic too. Like custom registration plates for one’s car. Not 4372 BC or 4197 BC. I’m sure God’s plates must read “D00D” or something
But my fear of shotgun-wielding redneck evangelical Xenophobic christians turned out to be entirely misplaced. Bad science apart, the place was thoroughly pleasant. Our carefully crafted Christian avatars were about as useful as a comb would be to Patrick Stewart.
I am always disappointed when my precisely nurtured stereotypes fail to come true.
Long lines! Most people in the queue did not strike me as fundamentalist nutjobs out to destroy the Western intellectual tradition. They struck me as tourists who thought it might be a decent idea to take their kids to a museum that advertised dinosaurs.
Now, lifetime members are a different species altogether. They pay $495 and are people who seriously believe that (barring the engineering that built the museum itself) science is generally bad and that (a specific English version of ) the Bible is literally true. But then I have met VHP-RSS type uncles in Chennai who believe that India had the Pushpaka Vimaana thousands of years before the Wright brothers. And people drop jewellery into the Hundi at Tirupati, so to each his own I guess.
This is what one sees right before one walks into the first exhibit (the Grand Canyon). Man, coolly going about his work while a dinosaur greedily inspects um..leaves. Confused? Don’t worry. Have Faith. Things will become clear soon
There you go. Clearly Wyoming Tyranoswareshwara Iyer was, before he was corrupted by the West and the temptations of McD and Taco Bell, pure high-class vegetarian. But given reptiles’ general bad breath, I am assuming garlic and onion were OK. Perhaps they were Doubting Tamasiks
A little further in, I found this, and if you have any common sense at all, it will now be crystal clear. If God wanted you to eat thorny thick-skinned pineapples, he would have given you flesh tearing teeth too. It’s called Intelligent Design, you canines of the feminine kind
I must say that this line of reasoning is wickedly brilliant and it’s all over the museum. Compare complex and hard-to-understand scientific reasoning with the powerfully simple “God created it” and it’s really like giving a small kid a choice between “Vitamin enriched protein augmented Spirulina fortified Ginseng extract” and “Chocolate ice-cream”
Yet another application of this beautiful trick. What are you gonna believe? Some terribly complicated explanation involving genes and evolution OR the “Vadivel Theory of the Origin of Man” – Why flood? Same Flood.
There was so much irony in this poster that it could very well become a shrine for anaemic patients. It’s one of Hubble Space Telescope’s legendary photographs and it’s being used here to prove the Biblical view that the “firmament” was created in 4004 BC. Yes, Hubble (of the expanding universe fame) Space (which is billions of light years across) Telescope (made from glass -> sand that is billions of years old).
After the Grand Canyon exhibit, I ran into this. Clearly, the family is breaking apart in the modern irreligious world primarily because in the past, women were expected to simply STFU and listen. As @cgawker points out, if there’s one thing all religions agree on, it’s that women should be given a hard time
In keeping with tradition, here’s a teenage Eve tempting a teenage Adam to visit the next exhibit
The next exhibit turned out to be the Garden of Eden. And as you can clearly see, Adam is Kabir Bedi and Eve has dual-purpose long hair. I looked around for an “A” certificate and a “Directed by Jag Mundhra” tag, but could not find it
A little further into Eden, I caught these 2 Miohippi in a compromising position. After a careful gender inspection of both of these proto-horses, I can confidently declare that this was the first Biblical lesbian couple. Perhaps only human same-sex relationships are disallowed
Ah well.
Once in a while, the museum tests you to see if you got a hang of their essential message. On lifting the knob:
Duh. Of course no. There you go. Simple, is it not?
Suddenly, Harish pointed it out, and it all became clear to me.
The Four Prophets of Peterology. They made stuff up in the past. I make stuff up now.
And finally, I saw this and it struck me that pretty much every thing in the world can be explained by these 7 steps. Let’s take this modern day example. Adam “creates” a fight with his girlfriend. His mind is “corrupted” with all manner of doubts. It becomes a “catastrophe” when she walks out. He is then “confused”. He says “Jesus Christ, what do I do now”. He calls her and she is still “cross” with him. He apologizes and they make up, and then they make out, thus leading to “consummation”.
So hahaha, LOL and all that at all these creationist duffers etc. But then, the only difference between a 21 million dollar Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY and people who consult astrologers is budget. It’s easier to laugh at dinosaurs eating pineapples than it is to smirk at someone breaking coconuts for Lord Ganesha. One’s own way of life is always superior no? “Our” philosophy was more advanced than this sort of simplistic nonsense no?
It was interesting that I did not find the sort of people Richard Dawkins always seems to find when he goes about pwning creationists. I just found regular folk who didn’t particularly care much about the complexities of the origin of life, the universe and everything else, not even two score and two times. To them one explanation is as good as the other and while we can bemoan this collective failure of rational thinking, there isn’t much one can do except build a better real science museum right next to this one. Even then, I’ll still visit this place to feed the alpacas
Here is part 1 and part 2. Barring the occasional edit, this is more or less untouched, although I have cut out an entire section from the end to keep the length manageable. This is the final part.
Chapter 3: Break up
The sugar syrup vending machine now had a security guard who was checking ID cards before letting us fill our cups.
The guard dutifully squinted at our ID cards and used advanced CSI like techniques in his brain to age-advance and match the faded 15 year old photo of my manager (with a full head of hair) with his current dopey-eyed bald look. Satsified, he opened a dusty cupboard with a small key and let us have our plastic cups. He also made us fill a “Cofee Register” with fields such as name, employee number, number of cups, date, time, signature and for some reason, “remarks” as well.
I put in “Did not eat breakfast, therefore fortifying myself with concentrated sucrose syrup” in the remarks column and the both of us started walking back to our work area.
“We have issues”, declared my manager, in a tone of voice that might have announced that the Spartans had attacked our city.
“Issues? What issues?”, I asked, in a tone of voice that suggested that I thought the word “issue” meant children
“We have an escalation”, he clarified, in a voice that might have announced that I had AIDS
“Who escalated what?”, I queried, in a tone that suggested that the only escalation I was aware of was the one to heaven while a lengthy guitar solo played in the background
“Onsite”, he said, in a voice ominous enough to suggest that the people he was referring to had the numbers 666 hidden in their scalp
“But we made the deliverables on time”, I exclaimed, sounding like an advertisement for a Swiss watch
“Onsite did not receive the email attachment”, he interjected, sounding like the “before use” part of an ad for Amrutanjan
“But we zipped it, rar-ed it and LHarc-ed it till we got it to under the 1 MB email attachment limit we have”, I said in the desperate voice of an Arab peasant telling the crusaders that he was just a human being
“But we failed to meet stakeholder expectations”, he said in a disappointed voice that suggested that we had missed a dinner appointment with Rajinikanth.
“But…”, I started, and ended, like a soggy 100-wala on Deepavali. We had reached the door to our work area. We made the necessary register entries and walked in.
“We need to have a meeting”, he declared in the voice of a euthanizing doctor just about to pull the plug on someone.
“I can handle this offline sir”, I said, desperate to avoid “the meeting”, which meant email invites and worse, reminding people on email, IM, SMS, phone and in person
“We need to fine tune our contingency plan and streamline our onsite-offshore communication”, he said, like an art critic complaining that the Mona Lisa needed a bit of work
“We did that last week”, I pleaded, like a prisoner whose parole applications had been declined repeatedly
“Looks like we still have gaps”, he pointed out, like Aamer Sohail to Venkatesh Prasad
I resigned to my fate and sulkily walked back to my desk, hit ctrl-alt-delete to log back in to my workstation. Windows wanted to update itself, and it gave me 2 options, Install now and Install a few seconds from now. I sighed, let it reboot and used the intervening aeon to do testicular surgery on my mouse. I used my nails to remove all of the gunk that had accumulated in the roller mechanism and looked at my monitor, only to find out that Windows had installed some new software and it would be mighty nice of me to let it reboot again. Suppressing a desire to throw my machine out its own namesake, I obliged and let it reboot again. I thought I’d charge my phone in the meanwhile, so I changed into cave diving gear and embarked on an expedition beneath my table to find the plug point. I hit my head and twisted my ankle while softly cursing at the school of IT office interior decorators that teaches its wards to make every plug point innaccessible. I eventually found it and realized that the points were so closely spaced that my bulky phone charger would not fit in along with the rest of the plugs already there.
I was now in that stage of that uniquely male frustration when brute force is considered a valid option for any and all problems. I squeezed in my phone’s charger plug through that geometrically unfeasible gap and when I was satisfied that electrons would have enough contact to flow, I extricated myself from under the desk and rubbed my hands of the dust that had now deposited itself on me.
I looked at my monitor, and to my horror, it was blank and that’s when I realized that my brute force insertion of the phone charger plug had disconnected my workstation power supply. I cursed, and got under my desk again to remove my charger, which was now tightly wedged between the other plugs. In utter rage, I yanked it hard, and briefly made contact with 220V/5A of electricity.
I convulsed, jerking my hand away from the plug, hitting it painfully against the underside of my desk. I lay down, in the darkness beneath my desk, with no desire to come out. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I was in a sanctuary. I wanted to spend the rest of my day just lying there, under my desk, far away from escalations, meetings and deliverables. I was in a state of relaxation, meditative and calm.
That’s when the fire alarm rang and a friendly female voice announced that there was going to be a fire drill and that all employees were expected to stay calm, and follow the instructions of the Fire Warden for their floor. I ignored the voice, mentally banishing it to remote depths of my senses and went back to enjoying my dark under-table sanctuary. That was when I saw ,from underneath, the dirty black shoes of manager, and his mismatched pair of socks walking towards my desk.
“Where are you? You are the fire warden for this floor. Here, take this helmet, wear it and rally the troops”, he droned, in the voice of the chap who convinced Bahadur Shah Zafar to lead the 1857 mutiny
I laughed.
I got out, with vim and vigour and vowed to discharge my duties as a Fire Warden with glory. I took my bag, as I suddenly remembered that it had a packet of chips from last week’s “Employee of the Month” award ceremony. I was starving and I thought I might munch on chips while waiting outside for the drill to get over.
I wore my helmet, and like Leonidas, urged my fellow employees to leave the tyranny of the office and boldly conquer the outside. I was stopped at the main door by a security guard who told me that bags were not allowed during a fire drill.
“But I already have it, so shouldn’t we be making our exit ASAP?”
“No sir. You have to go back to your desk, leave your bag there, and then continue escaping the fire”
Why, I asked. Rules, he said.
The end
Notes
This is more or less untouched, except for the notice, which is new. The initial dialogue originally started out as a fun exercise in trying out similes for different kinds of voices. It’s rather contrived but I had good fun writing it back then, so I let it stay
I recently unearthed an old diary of mine that, to my surprise, contained a few short stories I had written a really long while ago. I found one that I thought will make a good digestive pill after the Mile Sur post, a post that, despite the 400+ comments, I am not a big fan of. I don’t really like scathing humour, and I usually end up with a bad after taste the moment I hit submit.
This is a short story that I have split into 3 parts, and here is part 1
Chapter 1: Wake up
I woke up coughing, and with a neck ache from my roommate’s pillow, which incidentally was a solid block of iron and frequently found its way to my bed as part of an un-negotiated exchange offer with my roomie who was probably sleeping on my soft pillow at this very moment. I was still coughing when I attempted to extinguish the fumes of a dying mosquito coil before my eyes started burning. My hands reflexively rubbed my blistering eyes, which was when I realized that I had forgotten to remove my contact lenses before I slept. With one lens taking temporary residence on the bridge of my rather stately nose, I staggered out of bed and hit my leg painfully against the edge of a small table that was most certainly not where civilized folk would put it, resting at that casually vicious position where groggy gents climbing out of bed would most certainly make skin-breaching contact.
With an alacrity unusual for the time of day, my brain, like the Holy Inquisition, worked feverishly to assign blame for the misplaced snack table but concluded its investigation rather quickly as newly woken up neurons deposed to the effect that it was I who had snacked on Haldiram’s Cornflakes mixture last night, normally equal parts crunchy goodness and cloggy cholesterolness, but thanks to my roommate’s general dislike for lids, was completely lacking in the former quality.
I enlisted a few more reluctant brain parts and put them to work on orienting myself towards the bathroom, and while still wincing in pain, pseudo-limped towards to the wash basin and went about that crucial task of picking out my toothbrush from the bunch that contained, among other brushes of various vintage, the one must-be-avoided old toothbrush that was now used to clean combs and occasionally apply hair dye.
I picked mine out, a dull yellow medium hard brush with frayed tips, looked around for the toothpaste, and with 50% vision thanks to one contact lens on a nose vacation, went straight for something that looked red and tubey, which of course was not willing to dispense paste on account of there not being any left in it. So in the rich Indian tradition of making something out of nothing, I uttered a guttural growl, mustered the required Newtons per square cm, and birthed a tiny bit of paste that, as soon as I directed the brush towards my molars, carefully skirting around a nagging cavity, turned out to be Old Spice shaving cream. I immediately rinsed my mouth only to find, to my horror, a blackish, foaming mix of water, saliva and cream staining the wash basin. So I had, after all, picked up the hair dye brush.
I turned the tap on full to purge my mouth of dentally inappropriate products just find the water turn slowly into a trickle and finally come to a stop. I mentally devised the most ingenious torture devices for the Electricity Board bureaucrats who, in their good wisdom (teeth, I am assuming, and probably nagging) decided to shed load between 7.30 am and 8.30 am. I continued insulting their lineage as I filled a mug with water from a nearby bucket to complete my ablutions. The water tasted slightly um..elasticky, and against all the advice from several parts of my brain, I looked inside the bucket a little more carefully, only to find my roommate’s undergarments, soaking at the bottom.
I re-calibrated my daily hygiene requirements in the face of this sudden lack of usable water, and examined my face in the mirror to find out if I could convince myself that I did not need a shave (and a wash) right now. Against some internal protest, I constructed this illusion that I was actually pretty fresh looking and walked out of the bathroom after settling my hair with a comb that turned out to have an illegal immigration problem involving my roommate’s lice infested hair strands.
I purposefully strode towards the refrigerator, hoping to find some non-alcoholic liquid that could purge those final bits of hair dye and shaving cream from my taste buds. I gulped down from a bottle that read “Lychee flavored mineral water” and spat it out immediately when I realized it was vinegar. With a mental vow to run for office, get elected and pass a law against reuse of old bottles without corresponding removal of old labels, I staggered back into my bedroom, opened my half of the closet and conducted an olfactory inspection of all my shirts to determine suitability for office wear. I settled on the dirty grey checks with the coffee stain, but I could tuck the stained part in so I wasn’t too worried. Unlike the rest of the shirts, the odour of sweat on this one was matched reasonably by the Baygon-spray like scent of Brut cologne. As long as I kept some distance from the ladies today, I should be able to get through, I thought, as I searched around for some matching pants, found none with working zippers and decided to get even on my sleeping roomie by borrowing one of his.
After leaving no stone unturned in a house where most stones were in a state of being turned most of the time, I found my belt which, it turns out, had not kept up with my late night snacking. Using the last hole on my belt required me to constrict my abdomen in ways that my diaphragm and lungs strongly disapproved of. I looked around for a screw driver and hammer, found none, and attempted to use a small pair of scissors to eke out one more hole. The scissors bent out of shape, but managed a workable hole that for now resembled a really small plate of leather kotthu parotta.
I then sprayed the only pair of socks I could find (crumpled inside a really old pair of shoes of mine) with more Brut and put on my shoes after issuing eviction notices to a pair of cockroaches that were being shown around the insides of my shoe by some sort of a roach real estate agent. I looked at my watch, realized that I was late for some unimportant, yet crucial meeting, and ran to the elevator which had a board that read “Out of service. Please use Stares”.
I glared at it for a few seconds, and ran down 4 flights of stairs and breathed a sigh of relief as I found my colleagues still waiting for the office bus. But I had forgotten my ID card, which in an IT company usually results in several years of hard labour in Siberia. It also struck me that I had left my keys inside my apartment and locked myself out, with a sleeping roommate who generally required something in the 8.5 range on on the Richter scale to wake up.
I also felt a bit of air circulation in areas inside my pants that were not normal and with a great amount of casual caution, I explored the nether regions of my trousers to find, instead of comforting stitch, a gaping hole.
To be continued…
ps: If you survived this point, you will have realized that I had a major fascination for endless sentences 7 years ago. Also, I might add, like Dan Brown, that each of the individual mishaps did occur, just not all in a single day.
I woke up today, did my morning ablutions (Freshen teeth, Refresh Twitter) and quickly realized from a cursory glance at my browser that India Inc. had rebooted, reprised, refreshed, renewed and re-engineered Mile Sur Mera Tumhara. As the unauthor of the unauthorized uncut undocumentary on version 1.0, I was more than looking forward to find out if this new one was a case of “Empire Strikes Back” or Windows Vista.
But it had to wait, because I had a quiz prelims to participate in and fail to qualify. Anantha and Aditya, having seen the video before they came to the quiz, seemed a little dazed and confused, as if they had fought the Battle of Evermore on the misty mountain hops. I asked them how the new version was. Anantha, for some reason, could only incomprehensibly utter a few words. Like “Salman Khan”. And for some reason “Cut banian” as well. It did not make any sense. “Mile Sur” and banians are not the fondest of bedmates. But I decided to wait and find out more once the ritual of not qualifying was done with.
I then had a heavy lunch featuring a main course of Oil with a modest side of Channa and Bhatura. With a stomach mildly peeved at the lunchtime assault, I settled down to watch MSMT 2.0. The title said “Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara”, and I had some misgivings at that point. Why did Anantha call it MSMT 2.0 then? Nothing with the 2.0 suffix can be any good for anybody. Web 2.0 is a good example.
But I set aside all these thoughts, cleared my mind, opened my consciousness, and just before hitting play, I thought I’ll shave, but it turns out, there was no need to
Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara is EPIC BLADE. Way more blader than Anand‘s Max-100. This 16 minute Bollygasm will put blade like a Kiwi farmer on a sheep during shearing season. It’s a showy, shallow, cringe-worthy, slow-tempo, un-coordinated and unwatchable piece of crystalline Crappium Craptide wrapped in crapé paper.
Am I being uncharitable? Am I being, as Vir Sanghvi calls us, “elite”? Perhaps. To be fair, this new version does have its good bits, but the overall execution is um..literally an execution by hanging of everything that India represents. It is Indiawood, not India, that is presented in this video. Actor after actor, hamming to the point where pigs might have gone extinct, lip sync their lines with all the originality of a Soni Playbox 360 from Richie Street.
PMSMT is a user interface without a backend database. A film actor, at least in India, is a cosmetic, steroid-pumped, six-packed, waxed, silicone enhanced front-end for a script-writer’s ideas, a cameraman’s vision, a music director’s genius, a writer’s tale, a playback singer’s voice and a fashion designer’s art. India is not its film actors. We really are the people behind the scenes, and yet all we get in these 16 minutes are all hat and absolutely no cattle. If this is National Integration, the limits must have been 0 and 0. The area under the curves of Shilpa, Deepika and Priyanka is not India, or its sur. Leaving aside sad mathematical puns on a sadder video, did any of you notice any real integration, I mean, like people actually meeting and “milaoing”? No, of course not. Aamir wants his exclusive moment with the kids. Salman wants the other six-packers to stay away from his show-and-tell. SRK wants us to believe that he built the damn Worli Sea Link all by himself. They cleared Elliots beach so that Vikram could make love all by himself, to the Schmidt memorial. Sivamani wants us to believe that music is just about him, the percussionist, and Shahid Kapoor thinks he’s Robert Plant, without the band. Has there ever been a greater concentration of selfish, image-conscious, petty egos on display in the history of our country?
But let’s look at the video in detail. It starts with A R Rahman.
ARR tracing for us, his path on the Oscars' red carpet scale model
Continuum fingerboard? Really? The last time I heard something that sounded like this instrument was in my electronics lab back in college. It was called an Oscilloscope. Or perhaps you realized how much of an unmitigated disaster this was going to be so you decided to hold back on the good stuff. I don’t blame you. But later in the video, we have folks like Shahid Kapoor going all Robert-Planty and Freddie-Mercury on us without having a shred of singing talent. You sir, can sing, and all they let you do is play an oscilloscope. Sigh.
Amitabh showing the Pakis that if he starts a new IPL team named 26 Eleveners, he will not take in any Pak players
Big B + Taj Mahal Hotel + 26/11 + Hip Hop = Bollyxploitation. Yeah, Ahan, one time, two time, two to da six to da one to da one, peace out yo
Ehsaan demonstrating the Ajay Devgan Guitar Pose
Ehsaan, you know, you could have played more than just that one Paki-pop song style chord, you know? Oh sorry, you weren’t plugged in. My bad. Never mind. And also, did the directors tell you that your piece was the big crescendo ending bit? Cos when I heard you guys, I thought the video was coming to an end.
This is where we start to see the first serious cracks appear in this already shaky edifice. The video is not synced with the audio, and anybody who was looking at the Sitar would be totally confused because Anoushka’s fingers would not be at the note that was currently playing. Am I being too nitpicky? No. In 1988, with a distinctly smaller budget, DD managed to produce something for the ages. In 2009, with Avatar technology, Bollywood can’t edit video to be in sync with audio.
As an old lady once asks cogently in this brilliant Petronas ad, what’s with all the chest thumping, Vikram? Do you have a cold, congestion or cough?
Dear Mahesh Babu. I know you are the only star in India to represent 3 major companies, Thums up, Univercell and Navaratna oil but seriously, what with the producers already having audio-video syncing problems, at least move your lips to the actual words that are being sung. I’m afraid, you have no future as a member of a boy band.
Shiv kumar sharma + overacting dude – Nice Stock footage of Kashmir while the both of you are seated in the vicinity of the Qutab minar. But wait. Is that Rohit Bal? Why is he buying spinach?
Pnjaabi folks – I’m very happy, very very happy that you chose to ignore Bhangra. Your decision is one of the highpoints of this presentation. And Gurdas Mann, love your voice.
Zakir hussan and co – Awesome as usual. Respect.
Bhupen Hazarika – Whoa? What happened to the sruthi?. Fine, I understand he is old, but Rahman, could you not have autotuned him?
Hmm. Let’s see. Camels and Solar energy. Very royal, very rajasthanically royal, I might add.What is this? Product placement?
Salman demonstrating what these kids are likely to do 20 years from now when they watch this video
While I had been watching in horror so far, it was only when Salman came on the scene that I went “What. The. Funny”. Dear Salman, those kids were hearing impaired, not blind. Wear some clothes man. This is not a product placement for Poombukar Banians.
Salman demonstrating the dangers of kids joining the IT industry and becoming zombies
Also, you need to return those jeans back to the store. There’s a hole in the bum area. Or were you giving us a hint? Now, if I was Jon Stewart, I’d call you over to Camera 2, but I’m not, so let me say, come on over to the next sentence. In your desire to show off your steroid-pumped, cut banian body along with some 20 kids, did you even stop to consider how cruel it is to make deaf kids mime about “Sur”? Could you have got 30 adult hearing impaired folks to smile and mime about a sense that they probably have never experienced in their lives? These are kids man. They are just excited to be around the Salman Khan. They don’t know that you shoot black buck for sport. They don’t understand the dark irony of smilingly miming about “Sur”. It’s like asking a blind man to write a 500 word essay describing the beauty of a Van Gogh painting. What? You were expecting us to go all “Awwww so cute, see Salman miming with deaf kids” were you? Well, I almost did, but now I think you will earn more karma shooting paraplegic deer with a submachine rifle from a jeep.
Ustad Rashid Khan – Thank you sir, for breaking the monotony from the Sindhu Bhairavi (a.k.a Amit Bhairavi )
Drums Maestro Drums Sivamani – Saar. Nalla Thanni adikkireenga
L Subramaniam family promotion segment – 2 violins. Equalizer setting on violin = 0
Deepika Padukone – “If I become president of the world, I’ll ban this particular pose from beauty pageants and send everyone with a plastic smile to concentration camps. I’ll also call myself Mother Teresa Mandela.”
And dear vocalist, what’s with the erotic, Silk smitha type rain song voice?
Amjad Ali Khan – Nice Sarod. Must be expensive no? Please be careful ok, especially on Air India
The Kerala checklist. Yesudas – tick. Elephend – tick. Kaikottikali – tick. Fishing nets – tick. Mamootty – tick. Rangoli – what? Fail. Pookkalam is what’s required.
Sigh. Juxtaposing Shiamak with Shobana is like adding aspartame to Chakka pradhaman. Fail. Epic Fail. If there was any justice in this world, Shiamak would join Shobana’s Dance school and be rejected for complete and utter lack of talent.
Dear Aamir Khan Sir. Apropos of your bit in PMSMT, while I must say kudos to the yeoman service rendered by your indefatigable spirit, I must strongly lodge a protest against you for asking young children to accompany you to Khandala, where you propose to arrange for a high level meeting between Mr Sur and Mr Sur.
Sonu Nigam, who most certainly does not look like me, I believe, must have been told by the director that he will be singing solo for several Bollywidiots with no singing talent, for the rest of the video. Our man, due to the extra hair growth around his ear, heard it as “singing soul”, proceeded to listen to several CDs of R Kelly before letting loose. Whoever thought this style of singing was appropriate for MSMT must be made to listen to R Kelly’s discography.
PS: I do not look anything like Sonu in this video, contrary to popular speculation and baseless rumours on Twitter and other “online portal”. My reputation has been seriously demeaned, defamed and threatens the ethical parameters under which I, a blogger, operate. I have no choice but to speak to my lawyer and file a lawsuit against Anantha. That is the only way we can come to a epicwin-epicwin situation.
Sonu douchebaggalogical singing + major front-of-mic overacting = facepalmmoment
Dear Shahid, Ima let you finish, but Sivaji in Mridanga Chakravarthy was the greatest ever overacting while playing a musical instrument. Ever.
Ranbir Kapoor – More R Kelly + Nightsuit
An finally. Shah Rukh, you *really* need to stop doing that wide-open-hands thing. Everybody else is doing it now, and damnit, if Amjad Khan was alive, he’d take those hands and spare us all.
And finally, after a Bollywood orgy, somebody goes – “Hey. We forgot the sportsmen, and after all these overactors, we’ve run out of budget to hire big guns like Tendulkar, Ganguly and co, so let’s go with sportsmen who’ll do it for free, yeah, like from all those obscure olympic sports where we occasionally win medals.
Thank you Bollywood, for telling us that Indian achievers are almost always celebrity children, and not people who are self made. Amitabh jr, Yesudas jr, Shivakumar jr, Shiv Kumar Sharma jr, Amjad Jrs, Rishi Kapoor jr and Padukone jr really encourage all of us towards the lofty desire of wanting to be adopted by celebrity parents. How else can you be successful eh?
And since the producers of this execrable mess have managed to take something that every Indian has good memories about and essentially unzipped their Bollywood designer jeans’ collective fly and let loose, they decided to include some inspiring Armed forces imagery at the end just so that they can be immune from criticism. Yeah. Wrap your sorry bodies with the flag and all will be forgiven eh?
Update before you read this: Lonely Planet seems to be in the process of editing their piece on Madras since this post. Some of inaccurate references are now gone, but the opening paragraph is still nasty and compared to Delhi, still a turn off. But all the same, thank you LP, for your quick response. I am hoping that the editorial team actually does some real research this time before finalizing the article.
Another Update: After a couple of days of random edits, looks like the article is back to its original craptasticity. No change in tone, still sounds like it was written by a poorly informed, close minded writer with a serious grudge against the city.
I came across your entry for Chennai (Madras), and like a responsible citizen coming across a crumpled, empty packet of Lays chips on the street, I feel it is my responsibility to move it to the dustbin. But that would be rude of me, and Madras tradition demands that I invite you for a cup of filter coffee and a have a healthy discussion instead on the subject of urban cleanliness. As the person who originally pointed me to your article said, the problem with your piece is that it is about as far away from objective reality as Ramesh Powar is from Mutthiah Muralidharan’s world record. You romanticize the problems of other Indian cities while at the same time unzipping your fly and letting loose at Madras.
But wait a second. So I have a problem with one magazine’s portrayal of my city and I choose to rant about it online, eh? Too commonplace, and frankly, that’s not Madras’ style really. See, even in Tamil movies, when a hero is not given a chair to sit on, he does not immediately beat the shit out of everyone in the scene, but instead, fashions a seat for himself by the creative use of an angavastram. I mean, I could take each one of your claims, and comment on them rather critically. Like for example
Chennai has neither the cosmopolitan, prosperous air of Mumbai (Bombay)
So, the 24/7 crowds at Saravana Stores in T Nagar do not represent prosperity because it’s the prosperity of the lower middle class, while swanky malls that sell cups of sweet corn for Rs 40 and theater tickets that cost more than a bypass surgery represent prosperity elsewhere? To paraphrase Rajini, rich-getting-richer and poor-getting-poorer is not prosperity, but slightly-poor-getting-slightly-rich all around is. And then we have
Um, with no disrespect to Bangalore, a city I have lived in and loved, the only buzz I hear is the rumble of a million cars stalled in back-to-back traffic, and the pessimistic buzz of travelers waiting to get inside the city from its new airport that is practically light years away
difficult to get around
O really? You mean, more difficult than Bangalore? The public transportation system in Madras is far more comprehensive than Bangalore or Hyderabad. And to top off your first paragraph, we have this gem
Even the movie stars are, as one Chennaiker put it, ‘not that hot’.
Once I read that, I felt like a Mylaporean complaining about the quality of Idli in Darjeeling, like Michael Schumacher complaining about the lack of acceleration in an Ambassador. For starters, who the haemoglobin leaking four letter profanity is a “Chennaikar”? An obscure opening batsman for the Mumbai Ranji team I did not know about? The only thing remotely resembling a “Chennaikar” is a Hyundai Santro. It’s Delhiite, Banglorean, Hyderabadi, Chennaiite (if you have to), Calcuttan (or simply Dada) and finally Mumbaikar. I mean, who wrote this piece? A random amit who did not like the chapathi at Saravana Bhavan? Or somebody whose company forcibly transferred him to Madras? And I’m not even going to get the part about thermodynamically challenged movie stars.
Deep breath. Ok. Sorry. I had to get that out of the way. I suppose it’s because I lived in Delhi and Bombay before I settled down in Madras, so getting confrontational about trivialities is a bad habit I’m trying hard to shake off. So now, let’s get down to the Madras way to dealing with this. Let’s assume we are at Mylai Karpagambal mess (which you do not mention in your article) eating Keerai Vadai (which you do not recommend in your article) sipping on filter coffee (which you mention….no..wait..you dont, bloody amit) and I make the following observations
Hey, people who love the cities they live in love them very much. They will romanticize their every weakness (like you do for Mumbai and Delhi). So Delhi, while being filled with glittering gems and captivating ancient monuments, to quote your article, warrants no mention of its scary crime rate, while Mumbai has an “inebriating mix” of grinding poverty and swanky restaurants. How can grinding poverty be an ingredient in your inebriating cocktail?
People who hate the cities they pass through, like amits who work in the IT industry, will always ignore everything that is good about a city (like the beaches, sea food, ancient temples and cultural heritage in Madras just for starters)
So I propose to you that you cannot be fair and balanced if you only romanticize or severely criticize. So since you present an amit view of Madras, how about a Bihari view of Mumbai? Your article says
Measure out: one part Hollywood; six parts traffic; a bunch of rich power-moguls; stir in half a dozen colonial relics (use big ones); pour in six heaped cups of poverty; add a smattering of swish bars and restaurants (don’t skimp on quality here for best results); equal parts of mayhem and order; as many ancient bazaars as you have lying around; a handful of Hinduism; a dash of Islam; fold in your mixture with equal parts India; throw it all in a blender on high (adding generous helpings of pollution to taste) and presto: Mumbai.
How about we Biharize or Jharkandize that paragraph like this?
Measure out: one part plagiarized Hollywood, six parts car driving assholes who would like nothing more than to run us over, a bunch of feudal power-moguls, stir in half a dozen hate mongering Maratha morons like Raj Thackeray, pour in six heaped cups of grinding poverty that comes to Mumbai in the vain hope of a better life, add a smattering of swish bars and restaurants that employ us as cleaners and exploits us all the time, a handful of saffronized Hinduism out to slaughter the poor muslims among us, a dash of radical Islam out to terrorize the innocent, fold in your uncomfortable mixture with equal parts a callous India that couldnt care less for the labourers from my state, throw it all in a blender, spit in chewed pan, and add generous helpings of smug feelings of superiority, and presto: Mumbai
By itself, it would be rather unfair right? How about this view of Delhi, as seen through the eyes of a Madrasi?
Delhi, that festering pit of immorality, that hellhole of rape, corruption and violence, is a city that glorifies showines and materialistic consumption. But that apart, a good idli will set you back by Rs 70, which is ridiculous really. It’s also a bit like the US, in the sense that Delhiites rarely know that there is this rather large place called “The Rest of India” that surrounds the city in all directions. For example, they call Bangloreans Madrasis, which sort of pisses them off. Also, every guy in the city is named amit for some reason
You get my drift? Your piece on Madras looks like it was written by someone who hates the city. So how about you get a real person from Madras to write your piece (just like the ones that wrote for the other cities) and do my city the justice it deserves.
Thank you
PS: If you introduce me to the person who wrote this, I will gladly treat him to keerai vadai at Mylapore and then over coffee, we can discuss some of the nicer aspects of Madras he so unfairly ignores.
PS 2: If you believe Madras does deserve a better travelogue, the feedback link is here
PS4: For a more reasoned rebuttal of the Lonely Planet piece, read this
PS5: And for a real guide to the city, no one does it better than maami
PS6: It also turns out that Sharanya wrote about this almost 10 months ago, and Ravages pointed out pretty much most of what I did (and more). So there.
I wake up everyday, lethargic and lacking in vim and verve. I grab my morning tea, but that shot of caffeine does not do enough to jolt me into my normally hyperactive self. Then I open Firefox and start typing “re” in the awesome bar. It gives me two choices – reddit and rediff. The decision making algorithm in my left hemisphere ponders at this critical juncture of my day to day existence. I could either
reaffirm my rational faith in the pristine faithlessness of reddit, while also snickering at the occasional LOLcat and breezing through elaborate expressions of eloquent Microsoft-hate
read commentary generated by the wisdom of the Indian crowd, the collective intelligence of co-creative India 2.0, the smart mob of the temple, mosque and cathedral located in the middle of the bazaar
I always pick rediff. Reddit can wait. The unread 4 million items on my Google reader can wait. The Sky-is-about-to-transfer-a-large-amount-0f-momentum-to-the-top-of-my-head crisis email from work can wait. Global warming can wait. The tsunami about to engulf Besant Nagar can wait. Time can wait. After all, what is the only thing that can set off microscopic alarm clocks that play “Cowboys from Hell” by Pantera to shock every cell in my body into high-energy wakefulness every day morning? This can.
Now, after reading that, my brain shakes off the last vestiges of its immense desire to grab a few more minutes of sleep and moves into “Give me some more of this” mode. It extends its metaphorical arm, exposing its veins for another hit of Cannabis Rediffcommentia. My eyes oblige and scroll down from the Multi-destination Country Hygeine plan described above to its first response in classic Rediff grey-and-green.
At this point, my brain, having had enough already, shifts gears into Indian-Political-Armchair-Theorizing mode. I note the user name “lenin” and theorize that this is a plot by atheist communists to sow seeds of discord between Hindus and Muslims. So I do what any self-respecting Indian would do. Join in the conversation and contribute my subtle improvements to this clean-up theory.
Now my day has well and truly begun. I close the rediff window. After all, too much a good thing is..well, not a good thing. But I cannot help but pity the rest of the world and their lack of alarm clocks that can send this kind of jolt of vim and rigour every day morning. Should there not be Rediff commentary for all news, no wait, f0r all of history, spanning across space, time and those other string-theory dimensions? Should there not be History, With Rediff Commentary, enhanced, multi-perspectized, hyper connected, yet visceral and in (and out from the back of) your face?
So what if Obama got elected in a historical election?
So what if Julius Caesar was stabbed to death?
Or if Michael Phelps failed a dope test?
Or perhaps, when Star Trek style transporting technology is invented
The Rediff comment is the true byline to history. Not Youtube, which is simply inane, or Slashdot, which is simply too informative, or Reddit, which is simply snarky. A rediff comment is a snarky expression of pseudo-informative inanity, and in that delectable cocktail I believe we have the first truly pan-dimensional Indian internet meme. It’s called – What would a rediff commentator say to this?
One way of describing my profession would be – I leverage core competencies to build synergies in a co-creative environment and articulate value propositions for key stakeholders and deliver transformational change by positioning comprehensive, end-to-end, verticalized, out-of-the-box solutions for productivity improvements.
But I noticed that execubabblers seem to have forgotten our epics, so for their own good, I had to do this:
Please do the needful and revert back with any concerns.
As I was Titan watching the DLF IPL, It Ford Pickup struck me as CBS Dan Rather unfortunate that Bharti Indian cricket commentary had Parryware Kitchen sunk to Aavin appalling depths where commentators have to Anchor plug brand names into every sentence they Pillsbury utter. MDH Masala seasoned campaigners like MTR Ravi Dosa Shastri are now tongue Park Avenue tied as their regular cliches need to be Escorts Hospital surgically inserted with ads.
“We are in for a Parle cracker of a WIMCO match”, practices Ravi. “That Arun Ball icecream was four from the Dairy Milk moment it left the BDM bat. It has gone the BSNL long distance. Gilette Razor edged, and taken. This match, one feels, will go down to the Havell’s wire”
What next? Branded player nicknames? Like Swiss Beef Chuck Malinga? Or Samsung Split A/c Cool Gayle? Last year, I wrote about the annoying proliferation of ads in the telecast, but this year has seen a recession driven paranoia towards squeezing money out of every pore, so apart from “commentading”, we now have “Strategy Timeouts”. Legend has it that the marketing maven who proposed this idea called it, in a rare moment of candour, “7.5 more minutes of adjaculation”, but was unfortunately overruled. The same genius must have also come up with the idea of in-game player interviews with the “Logo Biriyani” backdrops. I am told that the IPL invested heavily in some Limelite Salon cutting Gilette Razor edge research on technology that would have enabled the logos in the backdrop to light up and get animated when the interviewer or interviewee mentions keywords of interest to a particular advertiser (called AdNonSense technology). So when Robin Jackman asks Anil Kumble about the “resurgence” of “spin”, perhaps the BJP’s “LK Advani for PM” ad could light up, do a little dance and then give way to the Durex logo as it activates itself when Kumble utters the word “performance”. The possibilities are endless. But apparently the technology wasn’t ready for prime time yet. So I am looking forward to it next year.
But I sometimes fear what will happen when Homo Sapiens evolves the ability to tune out ads, TiVo style. What will advertisers do then? I know. They will make us “GoBuy Manchurian Candidates”. Kids will be primed and conditioned from kindergarten to respond to specific brand name keywords. So during the “Strategy Timeouts”, advertisers will unleash magic words, like “Phosphoric Acid”, which for instance, will cause all of us to stand up and walk like zombies to the nearest store and buy a 4-litre Pepsi.
Don’t mistake me. I enjoy the IPL. Men enjoy masturbation once in a while. While I often crave for the classiness of a romantic, candle-lit test match, the pleasure of listening to legendary ex-cricketer commentators announcing with breathless excitement, the first DLF Maximum in any game with the fervour of a teenager at a Nickelback concert screaming at each one of their ridiculously homogenous songs copy-paste jobs, is too much to resist.
And last but not the least, on April 18th, the day when the DLF IPL started, I was wondering about the artificiality of it all. In fact, “Fake IPL” sounded like a nice moniker for this annual gajabujalsa of masala cricket. So I thought that starting a “fake” blog might be a good idea. Yes, the “Fake Fake IPL Player Blog”. But then it was too easy. Making fun of a celebrity driven, short-staffed, dysfunctional team with multiple captains and a poor playing record is no different from making fun of a handicapped kid trying to sing opera at the school annual day. It’s failure voyeurism. But us desis enjoy nothing more than a fictional anonymous insider tv-soap-style-badmouthing the big bad institution that’s muzzling his talent. Korbo, Lorbo, Whinebo. Blog on this, as they say.
By the way, the Chennai Super Kings also have an insider blog.
I felt a little nostalgic a few days back and watched Michael Holding torment Geoffrey Boycott
Or Viv toying with the bowler
I cant help feeling that compared to that, the IPL is, to paraphrase their own brand name infested catchphrase, a shitty moment of epic fail
Everyday morning in Africa India, a gazelle wakes up and heads over to a nearby pond, opens up a bottle of Maanpaal Palpodi and washes his teeth. At that very moment, a lion wakes up and heads over to the same pond and after some stretches and mane scratching, gargles. The gazelle, who really should be running for his life at this point, says instead “Wassup Simba?”. The lion then ambles towards the gazelle, at a velocity distinctly lower than the slowest gazelle in the herd and clears his throat. For those of you who have not heard an adult male lion clear its throat, it is, as the expression goes, a “sound to behear”. Imagine 2 tectonic plates sliding over one another, making love, and climaxing.
“Goin’ ok”, Simba said. He wanted to add “My dear”, but did not because he had higher standards for puns.
“Herd there’s going to be an election in India”. The Gazelle, on the other hand, did not have very high standards for humour.
Yeah.
So who do you think is the front runner?
Cant say anything right now. The BJP particularly are leaving no stone unturned. LKA has gone full tilt Web 2.0
You mean he has resorted to Large fonts, Slowly loading pages, Tag clouds, fluff and hot air to spread his message?
No. He now has a blog. As does Murli Manohar Joshi, who apparently “reeks of decency when he speaks his high-brow mind
Isn’t high-brow a slightly negative word?
Yes. So is “reeks”. Perhaps he was going for the double negative there. Their party also tweets now.
Wow, so how many followers do they have?
Right after the first tweet, they had 400 thanks to this lovely trick. LKA also has banner ads that appear everywhere, even on Pirate Bay, right along side the Caucasian looking 23-year old who for some reason, claims that she resides in Chepauk.
So what’s their electoral strategy this year?
Hmm. Nothing new actually. Right wing politics has a pretty standard format world over. Here is the guide to being an Indian rightwinger. The formula is simple
There is a complex reality
Take that and make a dangerous oversimplification
When presented with a potential rebuttal,
Dismiss it using either historical revisionism or bullheaded stubbornness. If you are not good at revising history or do not possess bovine willpower, don’t worry. Dismiss the rebuttal as “pseudo-secularistic minority appeasement”
You can apply this to pretty much anything. Here’s an example
With globalization, the influence of other cultures, both good and bad, is a reality we have to face with maturity
Pub culture is western and against Indian values
But western culture has given us technology and engineering as well
No. India had nuclear power in 2000 BC. Ravana’s son Indrajit launched depleted Uranium shells at Lakshmana who had radiation sickness. The Sanjeevani herbs were actually boosters of the immune system which helped him recover. Then Rama went on to use a thermonuclear Brahmastra against Ravana
Here is another one
India is a melting pot of many religions, cultures and art forms
Ghazals are Islamic and therefore against Indian culture
But muslims have been an integral part of Indian culture. What about Khayal, Qawwali etc?
No. Hindu culture was much superior before it was debased and destroyed by Islamic invasion.
Actually, here is a useful, printable chart for quick reference. I’m surprised that the right wing establishment in India does not circulate this.
So what about the Congress? They are more of a centrist party right?
Um. Not really. The Congress are perceivably centrist thanks to some simple statistics.
How so?
You take the rabid, frothing at the mouth types who will riot, maim and kill innocents (especially those wearing turbans) all in the name of the party leader and add to that, those who still swear by license raj and divide by 2, you get what in statistics is known as a “mean” (and also an adjective that has negative connotations), and that is how the Congress is “centrist”. They have been giving the country “the hand”, literally and figuratively for the better part of India’s existence.
So you are saying that there is really not much of a difference between the BJP and Congress.
Yeah. I would go so much as to suggest that the BJP could be called “The Congress of the Cow”
But what about the Congress track record of economic development?
You mean, the development of Urban Metropolitan Middle Class India?
Um yes. Which then brings us to the Left.
You mean the leftovers.
Ah yes. The CPI (Moshaibabus) and CP (Menons). The ones who believe e.e.cummings was the ultimate communist because he abhorred the capital.
Ah yes, the Third front. With so many leaders who wish to be PM that if they do get to power, we will only have PMs and no cabinet whatsoever.
And then there is the Yadavs’ Fourth front.
Yes. Like a trilogy in 4 parts. A marriagelive-in-relationshipone-night-stand slam n’scram of convenience.
Indian politics is so paradoxical, is it not?
Of course it is. Is that a problem?
Um. Aren’t paradoxes problematic?
Of course not. Indian politics is not about ideologies, or about political positions. It is about the paradox. In fact, it is the paradox. Clarity is the enemy of the collective political psyche in India. The Congress is religiously secular. They love the Sikhs while still doing many bad things to them. The BJP hates minorities while still loving them. They love Hindi while still getting into bed with the Hindi-hating Dravidian parties. The Communists embrace Marx while still continuing to stab him repeatedly in the back with the knife of capitalism. The AIADMK and DMK are sworn enemies and yet have absolutely no ideological differences. The Shiv Sena supremo loves everything Marathi, except of course his own anglicized surname “Thackeray”. India is both shining and dimming at the same time. And finally, the fourth front is back.
There is a Zen koan that reads – “Two monks were arguing about the temple flag waving in the wind. One said that the flag moves. The other said that the wind moves. They argued back and forth and could not agree. Hui-Neng, the sixth patriarch, settled the issue. He declared that it is neither the wind nor the flag that moves. It is the mind that moves”. Now, where do you think Hui-Neng learned his wisdom?
So let’s stop worrying about Varun Gandhi, Vaiko, Lalu and their ilk. Feroze Varun Gandhi loves Muslims, even if he wants to indulge in some hand amputations. Vaiko loves a bloodbath, but only because of the water shortage in Tamil Nadu and Lalu wants to crush Varun with both a roller and a bear hug of paternal love. We love our paradoxes. Elsewhere in the world, a pro-choice, liberal, gay Taliban commander might sound odd, but in India, the real question would be – is he an independent? Can he be bought?
At that very moment, the rising sun came up and a horde of elephants on bicycles waving lotuses and hands came charging towards them, campaigning for votes, and right then, it doesn’t matter whether you were a lion or a gazelle, you’d better be running.
Or if Michael Phelps failed a dope test?
Or perhaps, when Star Trek style transporting technology is invented
Everyday morning in 
